Answer

Will,

Let me preface my comments by encouraging you to again read the Autobiography of a Yogi chapter, "Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar." Your answers are there - and probably better ones than I can give you - but I'll do my best.

According to Sri Yukteswar, causal karma exists, but it is almost indescribably subtle. The root cause is the same as for physical and astral karma - desire. Physical plane desires are perhaps easiest for us to comprehend. Fulfillment of those desires requires that we be on the physical plane and the nature of those desires revolve around our physical bodies and our egos. Likewise astral desires. Fulfillment of those desires requires that we be on the astral plane and the nature of those desires revolve around our astral bodies and our egos. But causal desires are nearly impossible for us to understand because causal beings have no bodies - but there is still the smallest thought of separate existence from God - and thus the ego still exists.

Causal beings are vastly powerful. Sri Yukteswar said they can manifest universes! As long as they take any action that doesn't come from complete identity with God, then they are acting from a sense of separateness, and are therefore, in some subtle way, acting to satisfy their own desires.